a 4-Day Writers Festival in Western Colorado

Early bird all-access passes available Now.

An early bird all access pass gives you entry to all four days of the festival.

This four-day festival in the Grand Valley of Western Colorado offers stunning evening performances, writing workshops, round-table discussions on place, poetry and storytelling, stimulating conversations, place-based reflections, heartfelt connections, as well as spoken word, song, dance, movement as medicine, percussion, astrology and more.

Featuring beloved Placerville poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, adventure writer Craig Childs, co-editor of Native Voices, CMarie Fuhrman, Western Slope poet laureate, Wendy Videlock, Talking Gourds founder Art Goodtimes, award winning poet Uche Ogbuji, Lithic Bookstore's Danny Rosen and many more.

Events will take place at Ordinary Fellow Winery, The Blue Pig Gallery, and TBA (all in Palisade) with Saturday evening and Sunday morning events taking place at Lithic Bookstore and Gallery in Fruita.

Tickets will sell quickly. Seating is limited and fill on a first come, first served basis.

Please read carefully:

Early Bird All-access passes are on sale now until Feb 7. They will not be available after that.

Individual tickets for individual events will go on sale Feb 7. Individual tickets for individual events will be priced at $45 each. Check back on this page.

Purchasing an all-access pass for $165.00 allows you to sign up early for the events you wish to attend. This will give you first choice prior to the opening up of individual event ticket sales on February 7th.

------------ FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS-----------

THURSDAY, MARCH 6

Words from Wild Places, a workshop with Rick Kempa

Where: Ordinary Fellow Winery, 202 Peach Avenue, Palisade

When 3:00- 4:30 PM

We visit wild places to hone our city-dulled senses and to reconnect with the animal in ourselves. At the same time, our thoughts, feelings and insights—our humanness--come into clearer focus in the wild. Through a close consideration of our own and others’ nature-inspired poems, we will gain an appreciation for how our animal and human selves come together to create memorable poems. Bring copies of some wild words of your own if you wish—poems-in-progress, journal entries—to feed our conversation.

Rick Kempa is the founding editor of the literary journal Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry. A poet and essayist, his latest book is Truths of the Trail, a collection of short prose pieces about the backpacking life.

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THURSDAY EVENING PERFORMANCE:

Where: Ordinary Fellow Winery, 202 Peach Avenue, Palisade

When: 6:30 PM

The Affirming Flame: Come be delighted, moved and inspired in this opening celebration featuring poetry and song with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Invocation by Wendy Videlock, Rhythm and Beats with Uche Ogbuji, live music by singer songwriter Greg Luck and the lighting of the affirming flame ceremony by The Triple Muse Yogis.

Seating is Limited

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**** FRIDAY, MARCH 7 ***

The Obsession Chapbook, a workshop with Jennifer Hancock

When 10:30- 12:00 PM

Where: Blue Pig Gallery upstairs, 101 W 3rd Street, Palisade

We most often think of the chapbook as a stepping stone or a loose collection of the pieces you’ve got laying around. But I want to challenge you to lean into their obsessive potential, as a way to really allow the process of writing poems and fragments to act as puzzle-solving, stalking, falling-down-the-rabbit-hole deep-dives into our weird obsessions. So come get weird. Be the person at the party that everyone avoids because they know you won’t shut up about fishing lures or bomb cyclones and air pressure. I promise you’ll leave with good material to start your obsession chapbook!

Jennifer Rane Hancock is a poet and former Professor of Creative Writing. She’s the author of Between Hurricanes (Lithic Press 2015), and lives in Grand Junction with her husband, fiction writer TJ Gerlach and their various animals.

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A workshop with Uche Ogbuji

Where: TBA

When: 10:30 - 12:00 PM

Synopsis TBA

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Mentoring with Melody Jones

When: 10:30-12:00 PM

Where: The Artful Cup Coffee Shop & Lounge on the ground floor of the Blue Pig Gallery, 101 W 3rd Street, Palisade

In this small group Melody will help you get your footing on any of your current writing projects and will offer constructive guidelines on how you might move toward completion. Please bring three pages of work you'd like critiqued. Limit: 4 people

Palisade native Melody Jones is a published writer and poet, public speaker and coffee enthusiast. She serves as President of the Western Colorado Writers Forum and co-hosts Lit Radio on KAFM.

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Workshop with CMarie Fuhrman

When: 1:00 - 2:30 PM

Where: Ordinary Fellow Winery, 202 Peach Avenue, Palisade

Synopsis

CMarie Fuhrman BIO

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Voice and Frame-Drum workshop with Jamie Colon-Orelup

When: 1:00 - 2:30 PM

Where: TBA

This practice uses a frame drum and vocal toning with a focus on creative expression. Bring your medicine drums, rattles, bells, shakers and sound makers. If you don’t have a drum, Jamie will have a drum for you. Activities Include: ️Guided voice and rhythm practice, ️Breathwork, Honoring our lineage in ceremony, ️Laughter, Group vocalization What to Bring: Your frame or medicine drum (drums available),️Something to add to the circle that you will then take back with you, ️An open heart and open mind

Jamie Colón-Orelüp is a traveling medicine woman/curandera with a focus on nurturing the restoration of the spirit. She believes that the body is a garden and Earth based modalities provide tools needed for cleansing, balance, or recovery. Her integrative practice incorporates a blend of bodywork, movement, breathwork, ritual and ceremony, nutrition, laughter, herbology, hydrotherapy, reiki, sound and color therapy.

Seating is Limited

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Round Table Discussion on Storytelling, Poetry and Place with CMarie Fuhrman, Craig Childs, Art Goodtimes, John Nizalowski

Voice and Frame-Drum workshop with Jamie Colon-Orelup

When: 1:00 - 2:30 PM

Where: TBA

This practice uses a frame drum and vocal toning with a focus on creative expression. Bring your medicine drums, rattles, bells, shakers and sound makers. If you don’t have a drum, Jamie will have a drum for you. Activities Include: ️Guided voice and rhythm practice, ️Breathwork, Honoring our lineage in ceremony, ️Laughter, Group vocalization What to Bring: Your frame or medicine drum (drums available),️Something to add to the circle that you will then take back with you, ️An open heart and open mind

Jamie Colón-Orelüp is a traveling medicine woman/curandera with a focus on nurturing the restoration of the spirit. She believes that the body is a garden and Earth based modalities provide tools needed for cleansing, balance, or recovery. Her integrative practice incorporates a blend of bodywork, movement, breathwork, ritual and ceremony, nutrition, laughter, herbology, hydrotherapy, reiki, sound and color therapy.

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Movement as Medicine: A Body-Centered Approach workshop with Arlyn Alderdice and Ben Bentele

When: 3:30-5:00 PM

Where: TBA

Join us as we explore what it is to be embodied writers, readers, seekers and life-long learners. We will track our sensations, we will ever so gently allow ourselves to move our Somatic experience in a variety of styles. We will write about what we discover along the way. There will be responsive live music as well as a touch of pre-recorded music. You can expect to move out of your habits and be invited fully into the ever-changing world of your inner landscape.

Arlyn Alderdice: Wayfinder Life Coach. SomaSource Leader. Space-holder. Presence seeker. Musician & Dancer. Invoker of Full Being Aliveness! More at www.arlynalderdice.com

Ben Bentele:nFruit-fly / Hay-hand \ Translator & Odd-jobber. Somewhere
between American Folk & Persian Classical /\ birdsong & streamflow. More at www.bbben.org

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FRIDAY EVENING PERFORMANCES:

Rooting Down, Rising Up, Springing into the Mystery: Featuring storyteller extraordinaire, Craig Childs, poetry by Rick Kempa, Dulce Bell-Bulley and Jennifer Hancock, live music by Shawnee Videlock and TBA

When: 6:30 pm

Where: Ordinary Fellow Winery, 202 Peach Avenue, Palisade

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SATURDAY, MARCH 8

Falling in Love with the Broken World, a workshop with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Where: Upstairs at The Blue Pig Gallery Palisade

When: 9:30 - 11:00 AM

This world? Fall in love with this crazy broken world? How do we turn toward what hurts and stay open to beauty, wonder, love? Poems can be remarkable vessels, inviting us to embody paradox, accommodating the full spectrum of feeling all at once. In this playful, intimate writing time, we’ll read and discuss poems that model how writing might expand our ideas of what is possible, write our own poems, and talk about process. Sharing will be optional. Bring your skeptical self, and your willingness to be astonished, too. We’ll play. All levels of experience welcome.

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Evolutionary Astrology and the Rising Sun, a workshop with Dulce Bell Bulley.

Where: TBA

When: 9:30 - 11:00 PM

Astrologically focused, this class shows you the hidden aspect of the Sun’s journey in your life. The Sun represents your personal will, your animating life force, your personal authority, and it changes over time. This class will show you where you are in that change and how best to move forward.

Dulce Bell-Bulley is a psychotherapist and an astrologer. She is constantly amazed at the resonance of the solar system with the personal psyche. She’s originally from Zimbabwe and backpacked internationally in her youth. In her wiser years she’s bringing her books to publication and hikes in wild country as often as she can.

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Open Mic, hosted by Greg Luck

Where: TBA, Palisade

When: 12:00 pm - 1:30 PM

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Workshop with Craig Childs

When: 2:00-3:30

Where: Ordinary Fellow Winery or Riverbend Park

Synopsis

BIo

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SATURDAY EVENING PERFORMANCES:

Myth, Measurement and Inspiration: From Astrology to Astronomy

Where: Lithic Bookstore

When: 7:00 PM

an evening of poetry which explores our relationship to the stars and planets, feauturing astronomer Danny Rosen, astrologer Dulce Bell-Bulley, and TBA with music by TBA. Hosted by Art Goodtimes

SUNDAY MORNING

10 am: Closing Gourd Circle with Art Goodtimes

Where: TBA

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Craig Childs

CMarie Fuhrman

Wendy Videlock

Rick Kempa

Uche Ogbuji

Arlen Alderdice

Ben Bentele

Danny Rosen

Art Goodtimes

Jennifer Rane Hancock

Shawnee Videlock

Greg Luck

Jamie Colon-Orelup

Melody Jones

Dulce Bell Bulley

John Nizalowski

Host or Publisher TR Presentations